Jersey Shore Breweries: Icarus Brewing Review

Icarus Brewing is one of the newer breweries by the shore, which is becoming more and more popular. It’s located in Lakewood at Exit 91 on the Parkway, easily accessible after a summer beach day in Point Pleasant or Bay Head (on the West side of the highway along Route 88, close to the Blue Claws stadium). The location is nicely sized (it wasn’t very crowded when I went there, on a Sunday afternoon) and they have a ton of offerings for tasting or growlers refills.

A nice touch is that they had a food trucks right in front and you could order food for inside while enjoying the beers. It’s not common in New Jersey that you can grab a bite while enjoying tastings at a brewery.

The standard flight of 4 beers seems insufficient given the large selection of beers… Of course you can get two flights but would’ve been nice to have a 5-6 beers option. Here’s what I tried:

DDH Ella Ella – Australian IPA, light and easy even at 6.9%, with DDH standing for double-dry hopped.

DDH Bay Dreamer – A light refreshing Session IPA, with a slight citrus flavor. At 5% you can have lots of this on a hot summer day.

Power Juicer – An outstanding North East-style Imperial IPA! The Lactose (that I’ve started to grow fond of) smoothes up the taste, but you can still feel the strong hoppy flavors of this 7.5% awesomeness.

We Want the Idaho Gold – This was another of my favorites, it’s a New England-style imperial IPA (8.1%), with strong tropical flavors from the Idaho hops, a bit crisper than the Power Juicer mentioned above.

There are so many others I need to try, with such a varied selection of IPAs, so I definitely have to stop there again (I’ll update the review at that time).

If you’re looking to rent a house at the shore, check out ShoreVacations.com, Jersey Shore’s biggest vacation rentals resource. It lists hundreds of rental homes and condos from Sandy Hook all the way down to Cape May (including Belmar, Point Pleasant, Seaside Heights, Ocean City, Long Beach Island, Atlantic City or the Wildwoods). It’s a one-stop website for planning your Jersey Shore vacation, featuring beach information, weather updates and more! And of course, it has a full list of all the Jersey Shore events this year.